Assessment of the influence of pain neuroscience education on postoperative clinical evolution
Postoperative pain; Perioperative Nursing; Health Education; Pain Perception
Introduction: Pain neuroscience education is a strategy that aims to improve knowledge of the biological process of pain and has been a tool used in the perioperative context. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the influence of pain neuroscience education on the postoperative clinical outcomes in individuals undergoing general surgery and without a chronic pain history. Methods: A protocol was developed and subsequently, a controlled, randomized and parallel clinical trial. This study follows the recommendations of the SPIRIT and TIDieR checklists; CONSORT and its extensions (recommendations for studies with non-pharmacological treatments and adaptation for pain studies). The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Ceilândia, University of Brasília (CAAE 28572420.3.0000.8093) and it was registered a Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry (RBR-23mr7yy). Patients undergoing elective general surgery, both gender, age from 18 years of age to under 65 years of age were included. The IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0 and R version 3.6.1 programs were used for data analysis, Results: The protocol was carried out in the clinical trial as expected, without changes during the study. A sample of 71 patients was obtained, 33 participants in the control group and 38 being part of the intervention group. There was a predominance of mild postoperative pain, with sensory and affective characteristics and there was no difference between the groups (p≥0.05). In agreement with this data, prescriptions for medications with analgesic and anti-inflammatory action were identified, patients reported having received this type of drug and medical records were checked on medications administered by the nursing team for both groups (p≥0 .05). The postoperative vital signs were in the normal range and without differences between the groups. There is an exception of the systolic blood pressure variable, which showed a statistically significant difference (p=0.044). Post-intervention assessment of patients by the research team was carried out in the immediate postoperative period with a median of 12.4 hours for the control group and 12.8 hours for the intervention group. Conclusion: All patients in the sample, regardless of the allocation group, had low pain levels, stable vital signs and normal parameters, and they knew they had received analgesia. Therefore, for the sample studied, it was not possible to identify the impact of the PNE intervention on outcomes related to acute postoperative pain.